+ 22.12.2011 + This year’s Energy Globe World Award has been awarded to a solar heating and cooling project in Alberta, Canada.

The Drake Landing Solar Community achieves to cover 80 % of the heat demand with solar thermal energy. 52 homes are profiting from a system where heat from the summer sun is stored below the surface of the earth.

In winter it is used to meet 80 % of the community’s entire energy needs. 800 solar collectors generate 1.5 MW of thermal power during a typical summer day and heat up a glycol and water mixture kept in this system of underground heating tubes – to store heat for the winter with a combination of seasonal and short-term thermal storage.

During the warmer months, the heated water is distributed from the short-term storage tank to the borehole thermal energy storage system via a series of pipes. The pipes run through a collection of 144 holes that stretch thirty-seven meters below the ground and cover an area thirty-five metres in diameter. As the heated water travels through the pipe-work, heat is transferred to the surrounding earth. The temperature of the earth will reach 80 °C by the end of summer.

To keep the heat in, the borehole storage is covered with sand, high-density insulation, a waterproof membrane, clay, and other landscaping materials. The water completes its circuit of the borehole system and returns to the short-term storage tanks in the energy centre to be heated again and repeat the same process.

This solar heating system is part of a larger research project of the International Energy Agency’s Solar Heating and Cooling Programme Task 45. Its former chairman Doug McClenahan was personally involved in the project development and accepted the award at a gala ceremony in Wels, Austria. ”We hope that the Energy Globe Award for this project will help make it a showcase for others to see what is possible already today”, he said.

International Energy Agency Solar Heating and Cooling 2011

Drake Landing Solar Community 2011